How to host your own twitter images on WordPress (Android Edition)

Why?

Great question. With services like yfrog, twitpic, img.ly cropping up all over the place to host your images, why would you want to go to the trouble of doing it on your own server? Simple, control:

Ensure YOU own the content. Always.
Ensure you CONTROL the content. Always.
Ensure your audience has a pleasant viewing experience. Again, image hosting services are ad driven. You have no control of their ads.
Drive traffic to your website. This is especially important for businesses. Why give click away?

Many services such as Twitpic have revised their ownership policies, but are still leaving its control policy wide open. Heres an example

Twitpic TOS

All content uploaded to Twitpic is copyright the respective owners. The owners retain full rights to distribute their own work without prior consent from Twitpic. It is not acceptable to copy or save another user’s content from Twitpic and upload to other sites for redistribution and dissemination.

By uploading content to Twitpic you give Twitpic permission to use or distribute your content on Twitpic.com or affiliated sites.

To publish another Twitpic user’s content for any commercial purpose or for distribution beyond the acceptable Twitter “retweet” which links back to the original user’s content page on Twitpic, whether online, in print publication, television, or any other format, you are required to obtain permission from Twitpic in advance of said usage and attribute credit to Twitpic as the source where you have obtained the content.

You retain all ownership rights to Content uploaded to Twitpic. However, by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and Twitpic’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in media Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your media from the Service provided that any sub-license by Twitpic to use, reproduce or distribute the Content prior to such termination may be perpetual and irrevocable.

How?

Now your saying “Ok, I get that but how can I do it?!” Well, luckily I did most of the painful work. Here’s what you need to start:

WordPress 3.x
Twitter Account
Trumpet for Android
Tweet Images Plug-in for WordPress
YD Recent Images for WordPress

Step 1 – Configure the plug-ins.

Install ‘Tweet Images‘ for WordPress. Once you install, Activate, and under Posts -> Categories create a category for your posts. This isn’t necessary, but I like having things organized. Once that is created, navigate to Settings -> Tweet Images and check the category you just created.

Install “YD Recent Images” for WordPress. Again, be sure you Activate the plug-in. For now, lets just activate it, and keep the default plug-in settings.

Step 2 – Configure your Android Phone

If you haven’t already, now would be a good time to install Trumpet for Android. While that’s installing, in WordPress, click your Username -> Profile on the Top Right area of your admin-panel. Scroll all the way down to the ‘Tweet Images‘ section and check the ‘Post Notifications‘ box and copy the ‘API Endpoint URL.’ Paste that URL into an email that will reach your phone. This information will be needed in the next step. CLICK UPDATE PROFILE

Ok, now lets configure Trumpet. First, go ahead and configure your account(s). One of the nice things about trumpet, is you can have a different Image Host Endpoint set for each Twitter account. Handy if you have a business and personal account, as I do. Once the account is setup, go to Menu -> Settings and choose ‘Media Upload Service.’

Click Upload Service, and choose ‘Custom’

Click ‘Custom Upload URL’ and paste the key you just emailed yourself into the box.

Step 3 – Test

Now we have the moment of truth…try tweeting a picture…lets see what happens. What should happen is, a message and picture are tweeted with a working, clickable link. If this worked, lets move on. If not, be sure you did all the steps.

Step 4- Configure ‘Recent Images’

Now, lets make sure the plug-in ‘recent images’ is displaying how you like. Go back to your WordPress Admin Panel and go to Appearance -> Widgets. Locate the widget called ‘Recent Images’ and drag it where you would like it displayed. Once that is done, navigate to the page and you should be seeing the new twitter images and possibly some of your normal gallery images. This is normal. You will notice its all probably in one vertical line, with no seperation between pictures. I like mine spread out in rows and columns, and heres how to do it.

Navigate to Plugins – YD Recent Images and click edit. On the right side of the page, click ‘yd-recent-images/css/yd_recent-images.css.’ Overwrite the entire code block with the following and then click Update File:

div.yd_ri ul,
div.yd_ri li {
	list-style: none inside;
	margin: 0;
	margin-left: 0;
	padding: 5px;
	display: inline-block;
}

That’s it! Good luck!

If you find these tools useful, I urge you to share with your friends and family as well as support the developers that make it happen

Yann who created the YD_Recent Images plug-in and Simon Wheatley who developed the Tweet Images plug-in.

Tags: Android, Tweet Press, Wordpress Image Host